Northmen basketball team focuses on Alpena

January 09, 2004|BY ANDY SNEDDON NEWS-REVIEW SPORTS WRITER

Dennis Starkey is looking ahead. Not up, not down, but straight ahead. For now.

Starkey's Petoskey High School boys' basketball team finds itself as the Big North Conference's last remaining unbeaten as the Northmen, 3-0 league, 5-0 overall, welcome Alpena for a league contest Friday, Jan. 9.

Alpena is one of four teams who are 2-1, a game back of the Northmen. Cheboygan, Cadillac and Traverse City Central are the others.

The Wildcats, 3-2 overall, lost to the surprising Chiefs on Tuesday, 66-59. Petoskey handed Cheboygan a 71-45 loss, its one and only this season, before the Christmas break. And the Northmen are coming off a 47-point dusting of Traverse City West on Tuesday.

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Starkey, in his 18th year at Petoskey, doesn't put a lot of stock in those numbers.

"You always get into trouble comparing scores," said Starkey, who noted Alpena beat a good Saginaw Nouvel team, 67-66, a week ago. "We're going to expect to see an Alpena team that's focused and ready to play."

Focus has not been a concern for the Northmen, who are off to the best start since the 1994-95 squad began 8-0. And the Northmen started fast on Tuesday, burying West with a 19-4 run to start the game, which finished 74-27. The 27 points was the fewest allowed by a Petoskey team since Rudyard scored just 24 in a game midway through the 1995-96 season.

Those numbers are all well and good for the history books and press clippings, but Starkey said his Northmen are dealing with the hear and now.

"Without even looking long term, we know we want to just keep getting better," he said. "Our guys will be ready to play. We certainly can't be looking at anything as far as the league standings. It's another big game."

The Wildcats, like Petoskey, feature a strong backcourt duo in Carl Cirulis and Brett Robbins, and they have plenty of post depth with at least four players in the 6-foot-4 to 6-5 range who play significant minutes.

"The main thing is that they have several good sized post players, so they keep coming," Starkey said.

Tops among those players may be 6-5 senior Dan Puls, who scored 19 points in the Wildcats' 66-45 pre-Christmas win over Gaylord.

Petoskey's two main post players, Pat LeBlanc and Mark Llewellyn, both 6-5 seniors, have been all Starkey could have hoped for and more. The post corps have been bolstered by the return of 6-3 senior Jordan Munson, who played significant minutes Tuesday against West after missing the first four games with an injury.

"Our post play has been getting better all the time and getting Jordan back certainly helps," Starkey said.

Offensively, Petoskey's bread and butter has been the senior guard combination of Damon Huffman and Anthony Wilhelm, who are averaging a combined 41.2 points per game (Huffman, 22.8; Wilhelm, 18.4), or about two-thirds of the Northmen's offense.